Tutorial III: Give your digital images the vintage looks of film By Johnny Patience I got a lot of questions about the tones in my last uploads on Flickr. A lot of people asked me about the more filmy look and asked me if I could share a couple of tips about how to achieve this. As I post process slightly different now than I did way back when I did my tutorial about bokeh I decided to share my latest technique and do another little writeup. I also decided to make it a little easier for everyone who is interested to recreate this look for their own images and created a free Photoshop action and an example workflow. Both can be downloaded at the end of this tutorial. The workflow is a Photoshop PSD-File that as well includes a resized version of my SOOC (straight out of camera) shot that I got out of my D700 and every post processing layer, so that you can play around with my settings and see how that works for your own pictures. Film - A bit too hot for my taste Film and vintage film cameras are a huge hype at the moment and that alone is honestly always a bit of a turn-off for me. Everyone seems to be jumping on this bandwagon and you see dozens of people shooting Rolleiflex, Hasselblad, Contax or other heavy medium format artillery. Of course that's great and these cameras give wonderful results if you know how to master them. But for me it's a bit much. I own a "vintage" Nikon FM2 myself and like to shoot it with my 50mm 1.2 Ai-S manual focus lens. But it took me forever to find time to buy a roll of film, shoot it and then have it developed and scanned. Actually I never even uploaded a shot on Flickr that I took with the FM2. Maybe I should try that sometimes. ;) However as many others I really like the rich low contrasty looks of film a lot. But the handling is simply too complicated for my relatively busy everyday life. That's why I tried to re-create the vintage filmy looks and I found a personal recipe that I really like and that works very well for my own stuff. I know I'm not exactly inventing the wheel here and no matter how hard you try, it's really difficult to match the looks of "real" film - simply because of the technical difference. Film vs. Digital Films responds to light in the same way that the eye does. But the response is not linear, it's more sensitive to light near the middle of the sensitivity range than at the edges. This response can be plotted as a curve. Contrastier films have steeper curves than films with more latitude. One general advantage of film is the contrast ratio. Film can still handle about ten times more contrast then a digital sensor. This leads to much more control over your exposure. You have to worry a lot less about blown out highlights, for example. Or you can overexpose film by two full stops and still get lovely saturated colors while creating a wonderful airy feel. You can find more information on film vs. digital here. Photoshop Actions To recreate or emulate the "filmy response" I use Adobe Photoshop to manipulate my digital images. If you want to apply the same steps over and over again you can create an action in Photoshop. The Photoshop actions I am using on my shots are professional commercial products except the one I created myself to share my tones with you. I am using Rebecca Lily's actions for Photoshop and as these are not free Rebecca offered to help and included my free action and my workflow in a special discounted actions set that you will need to post-process in the same way (you will find the download-link at the end of this tutorial). Step by Step Finally I would like to share my actual step by step post-processing recipe with you. As I said before it's not a substitute to film and if that's what you're looking for you probably should try a film camera. But it's fun to play with and to give digital images a filmy look. 1. SOOC This is the SOOC shot (SOOC stands for "straight out of camera" and refers to an image without any image editing) that I got out of my Nikon D700. I shot directly into the light and you can see that the highlights are partly blown out because of the overexposure. I took this with my Nikkor 50mm 1.4 G wide open to achieve a shallow depth of field and a nice smooth bokeh. Nikkor 50mm 1.4 G @ f1.4 - Nikon D700 2. The Johnny Patience "signature" tones The first thing I do to all of my images is to apply my "signature" tones. It's a very simple but effective cross-processing technique that I already explained in my previous tutorial. I changed it slightly over the last months and it works very well with most shots, especially naturey shots that have a lot of directional light in them. You can see how it makes the light glow. To emphasize the shadows a bit more (the SOOC is relatively washed out) I applied it with an opacity of 75% and set the blending to "multiply". I use the same curves on portraits as well but desaturate the result before continuing in my workflow to make the skin tones look more natural. Nikkor 50mm 1.4 G @ f1.4 - Nikon D700 Now you can already see the final result that I could have uploaded just like that. To make the image look a bit more "filmy" I want to have the tones a bit more muted and to add an overall more pastel look to the image. To apply this effect on all images I get out of a shooting I create a workflow that contains every image editing step up to the final result. I apply it consistently to all images, always have the actions in the exact same order and just play with opacities a little bit to balance out the differences in color and exposure of different shots. 3. Strawberries & Cream @ 85% opacity To add some warm, creamy soft vintage tones I apply Rebecca Lily's "Strawberries & Cream" with an opacity of 85%. Nikkor 50mm 1.4 G @ f1.4 - Nikon D700 4. Wheat Field @ 25% opacity After that I add some desaturated and warm earth tones by applying "Wheat Field" with an opacity of 25%. At this opacity the action effects mostly the highlights and mutes the blown out parts of the image a bit more. Nikkor 50mm 1.4 G @ f1.4 - Nikon D700 5. Buttercup @ 12% opacity Then I use "Buttercup" to add a soft, vintage, hazy sunwash. I apply this with a very low opacity of only 12% to achieve a warmer low contrasty look. Nikkor 50mm 1.4 G @ f1.4 - Nikon D700 6. 35mm @ 18% opacity To emphasize the low contrast look of film even more I finally use Rebecca's "35mm" action at an opacity of 18% to apply an retro-vintage look. This action is monotone by default and you have to deselect the desaturation layer in the action to switch it from monotone to color (the workflow file includes this step as well). Nikkor 50mm 1.4 G @ f1.4 - Nikon D700 That's it! You're done. :) Download If you would like to try this at home you can find the download files here: - Free Johnny Patience Photoshop action Have a great day everyone and thanks for your time! :) Johnny Patience